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With exciting turns, independent projects, spilling Red 40 all over the floor, and our symposium presentations, it is safe to say that I am officially a member of the TRIP@WTHS24’ class. These past few months have been filled with a variety of different fun challenges, and I couldn’t be more excited to share them with you!  From a young age, I’ve always been interested in the mysteries of the world. It’s one of the reasons I believe I’m so compelled by everything science From a young age, I’ve always been interested in the mysteries of the world. It’s one of the reasons I believe I’m so compelled by everything science, especially the research portion of creating an experiment and incorporating it into something meaningful. For my independent project, I focused on the effects of Red 40 on hyperactivity, and whether or not it could be counteracted by the natural supplement licorice. One of the most important aspects of designing my question, and molding it into a project I would be proud to present, was making it meaningful. To the audience, to myself, and to the fruit flies…especially to the fruit flies. Red 40 is a synthetic food dye, and contains benzene, which is a natural cancer causing substance. It is in so many of the foods we consume on a daily basis, and many do not know the harmful properties it contains. With that in mind, I had found my meaning for this project. Red 40 was proven to be dangerous, but could it be counteracted with a natural supplement over time?  Red 40, as expected, caused a large increase in the hyperactivity in flies tested. Licorice, as the natural supplement used to counteract the food dye, also did its job. I found that while there was still an increased percentage of hyperactivity in the Red 40 + licorice vial, it was severely diminished in comparison to the Red 40 vial by itself. Throughout these past few months, data wasn’t the only thing I collected. I collected the communicative skills to speak to my peers and my instructors efficiently. I collected presentation skills that I will be able to use in future projects. I collected the information and knowledge of being a researcher in a lab, and the responsibilities and challenges that come with it. My experience at TRIP has been one that has been full of fun adventures, and I am bittersweet to say that it has come to an end. The amazing people I collaborated with every Saturday, and the instructors that were always attentive and willing to help in any way they could, showed me that you can still have an amazing time while completing work efficiently. Thank you to Dr. Leystra, Dr. Purdy, Austin and Anoosha, and my peers for making this experience worthwhile!!
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 Hello everyone! My name is Gurnoor, and this is my final blog post for the TRIP initiative. Upon the conclusion of an amazing three-month TRIP, I look back on the knowledge I have gained, the community I became a part of, and the experience of a lifetime I have had. Coming into TRIP, I could not tell a female and male fly apart, but now I can proudly say I have conducted an independent project sorting over 1000 of them!
My independent research project investigated the effect of overcrowding on fertility and progeny health. This project was inspired by some background research that revealed urban infertility rates were more significant than rural infertility rates, leading me to wonder why this occurred. I narrowed it down to a significant difference between the two locations: population. In order to analyze the impact this stressor had on fertility, I set up a control vial with the standard amount of food and 20 males and 40 females, along with a stressed vial containing the same quantity of flies but double the amount of food so the population density within that vial was greater. I then conducted the female fertility assay to calculate an embryo per female ratio of each vial, revealing that the stressor had no impact on fertility. However, after calculating the % hatching for each vial, I realized that a significantly smaller proportion of the embryos in the stressed vial hatched into larvae. This led me to conclude that though population had no impact on fertility, it did affect the health of the progeny negatively. This realization led me to another question: Could we counteract this negative effect with dietary supplements?  In order to answer my new question, I set up three additional vials: one containing Fenugreek, one containing Shatavri, and one stressed vial containing both herbs. I chose these herbs as they have both been linked to hormonal balance and an increase in estrogen, which correlate to a higher fertility rate. Each week, I continued performing the female fertility and analyzed each vial's embryo/female ratios and % hatching rate. My results indicated that while Shatavari had no impact on fertility, Fenugreek had a significant impact. Additionally, though Shatavari had no impact on fertility, it greatly positively affected the health of the progeny along with Fenugreek. Finally, both of these herbs, when incorporated in the overpopulated vial, could counteract the stressor's negative effects and rescue the health of the progeny. Throughout conducting this project, I gained confidence in myself as a researcher and my ability to present my work at the symposium Throughout conducting this project, I gained confidence in myself as a researcher and my ability to present my work at the symposium. I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity and thankful to all the mentors who guided me along the way. I am confident that the work I did at TRIP will be valuable to any future work I do as a researcher or in the medical field.
Time has flown by so quickly! It feels like just yesterday I stepped into the lab, brimming with excitement, and now here I am, writing my final blog. These past three months have been an incredibly surreal experience during which I’ve gained invaluable knowledge, which will undoubtedly benefit me in my future career.
both melatonin and a disrupted sleep schedule would increase anxiety levels when utilized individually and together Through my 5 trials, a consistent trend emerged in the data: both melatonin and a disrupted sleep schedule would increase anxiety levels when utilized individually and together. Regarding fertility and embryos health, a high dose of melatonin decreased fertility and embryo health while disrupted sleep increased them. However, when combined, they decreased fertility and embryo health.  My time here at TRIP has been incredibly enriching, exposing me to lab and hypothesis-based research. The knowledge and experiences I’ve made here will stay with me for a lifetime, and I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to explore and learn. Thank you again to Dr. Leystra, Dr. Purdy, Dr. Valdes, Mr. Cozzone, our amazing TAs Anoosha and Niki, and my fellow TRIP classmates for making this experience unforgettable. Thank you for following my journey throughout TRIP these past few months!
Signing off one last time -Amritha Sakamuri  How time has flown… I can not believe that I am writing my last blog post and have concluded my journey with TRIP. The day I first stepped into the lab really feels like yesterday. However, I have come a long way since the beginning of TRIP. I have mastered basic laboratory techniques such as micro pipetting and sorting flies. Moreover, I have designed and completed my own independent project that addressed an original research question. To me, that is something super special and fulfilling as actually researching and answering a question that I am truly interested in is an opportunity that I am rarely able to pursue both in school and out of school. By providing such an opportunity, TRIP has provided me with invaluable insights into the research process and has shown me a glimpse of what my future as a scientist will look like. And for that, I’m eternally grateful.  As I had covered in my previous blog post, my independent project studied the effect of microbiome health on motility. I am asking this question as it is a known fact that many relevant and common environmental factors, such as stress and lack of sleep, can reduce microbiome diversity, so I would like to study the specific effects of a compromised microbiome on health. I picked to study motility in particular as I wanted to study the extent to which microbiome health is impactful since I don’t think that microbiome health and activity are the most directly related. Moreover, a characteristic of modern society is its lack of physical activity, and I would want to see if this societal trend may be in part caused by the possible decreased motility from an unhealthy microbiome. To actually test this, I performed the negative geotaxis assay and larval locomotion assay in addition to collecting developmental data along the way. I found that an unhealthy microbiome causes decreased activity and a healthy microbiome causes increased activity. In addition, a cool little nuance that I discovered was that probiotics can help rescue antibiotic-compromised activity, but in adults only, not in larvae. This is something intriguing that I would like to further research if I get the opportunity to do so. As you can see, although my curiosity was satiated by conducting this research, the process and results opened up a whole new set of curiosities that I am itching to satisfy. I think the beauty of research lies in that, and TRIP has provided a wonderful gateway for an aspiring scientist like myself to explore the realm of research.
Overall, TRIP has truly been one of the moments of my high school journey that I will cherish because of the amazing research and instruction and the incredible people I was able to meet along the way. I learned unique skills such as how to persevere and think through failure. I also learned how to tell a compelling story with my research by framing it in a certain way. I thank Dr. Leystra, Dr. Purdy, Dr. Valdes, Mr. Cozzone, Anoosha, and Niki for guiding me and my peers throughout this TRIP. I also thank my labmates for being the most wonderful companions and yappers.
Signing off now, Austin Choi Hi everyone! My name is Phoebe Ting, and I am a junior at Bensalem High School. I have lived here my entire life with my parents and my sister, and I love it here!
 At school, I am the captain of the varsity swim team, which is what I spend the majority of my time doing… Seriously, I’ve been swimming since before I could walk. I love the self-discipline that comes with the sport as well as the time I get to spend with my friends. I’m also involved in the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA), Mathletes, and the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science (PJAS). Through conducting experiments and presenting my findings to judges, PJAS has majorly influenced my decision to pursue a career in STEM and join the TRIP program. I am also passionate about giving back to my community as I’m a member and served as the secretary of my school’s Community Service Club. I enjoy combining this passion for helping the community and my love for creativity in student government, where I plan and design school events to boost spirit and morale. Additionally, as a part of my school’s mock trial team, I currently portray a food critic blogger, which is VERY on-brand for me. I enjoy trying out new restaurants -- though, Chipotle will always be my comfort food. Outside of school, I am a certified Emergency Medical Technician, which allows me to have a hands-on application and real-world experience of topics I’ve learned in school. I also volunteer in a children’s hospital in my free time where I can connect with people in my community by doing the thing I love to do most: talking. I am also looking forward to combining my love for swimming and helping others by teaching swim lessons to kids. Although I know I want to pursue a career in STEM, I’m not entirely sure what I want to do, so I’m grateful that TRIP gives me the opportunity to explore my interests. I’m looking forward to this experience to be able to design an independent research question and carry out an experiment. For my kickoff experiment, I will be measuring how Valerian and disrupted circadian rhythms affect sociability. Although we’ve only had one week of class so far, I can’t wait to see what the rest of this program has in store for me. I’m already having so much fun, and I can’t wait to learn more!
I found that soap decreased motility, as predicted by my hypothesis, and that Vitamin D3 essentially had no effect on motility, proving the latter part of my hypothesis wrong. After the experiment, I made a slideshow presenting my project and its results. The process of creating the slideshow and Dr. Leystra and Dr. Valdes’ insightful comments taught me how to present my findings to not my peers but also a more general audience. Overall, this kickoff experiment exposed me to what my independent project will be like, whether it be making drug stocks, performing assays, collecting and analyzing data, or presenting.  For my independent project, I decided to study the effect of microbiome health on motility. I chose this topic as many aspects of our lifestyles can lead to decreased microbiome health, such as stress, lack of sleep, diet, inactivity, and improper antibiotic use. I decided to study the effect on motility as it is not directly correlated to microbiome health, and I think it would be interesting to see how overarching the effects of poor microfloral health can be. To answer my research question, I plan to create 4 groups of flies (control, pro/prebiotic-exposed, antibiotic-exposed, and pro/prebiotic + antibiotic-exposed) and perform the negative geotaxis and larval locomotion assays on them to collect data on the magnitude of their movement. I will start this process next week and I am BEYOND excited!  Until next time.
Hi everyone! I’m back, and I can’t believe we’re already halfway through the TRIP program. I have learned so much in the past few weeks, from how to transfer and sort flies to different behavioral assays. My favorite part so far has been presenting my kickoff experiment to my peers. For this experiment, I studied the effects of Valerian and disrupted circadian rhythms on the sociability of fruit flies. To determine the sociability levels of the fruit flies, I placed them in chambers and calculated their distance after 15 minutes; the closer the distance between the flies, the more social they were. I found that Valerian increased sociability and constant darkness in flies (a.k.a disrupted circadian rhythms) decreased sociability.  This piqued my interest in sleep deprivation, especially because of its relevance among teenagers. It feels like all high schoolers are constantly lacking sleep and self-medicating with coffee and energy drinks despite the potential negative effects. Naturally, I fell down a rabbit hole of researching energy drinks and their effects. Initially, I planned to study how sleep deprivation and energy drinks affect cognitive function for my independent research project. However, after discussing this idea with the instructors, I decided to tweak my project to focus specifically on energy drinks and their short-term and transgenerational effects on fruit fly motility. To study this, I will be performing the negative geotaxis and larval locomotion assays. I’m excited to see whether there are differences in motility between the short-term and transgenerational flies. I can’t wait to share my results in the next post!!
I can proudly say I’ve been a “lawyer” for the past two years. If I were to tell the story of how I joined the Mock Trial team, it would take a whole day, but I can keep it short and sweet; I remember passing objection notes to my brother from the corner of his desk while he faced the computer screen. This was during his online Mock Trial “trial.” Ever since those days, I’ve held onto my goal of competing at mock trials until I graduate. If it isn’t obvious yet, it’s one of my favorite communities. In three days, it will be our second round of competition, so we have been busy preparing nonstop. Wish us luck!  Speaking of community, I feel myself most attached to my Muslim brothers and sisters out there. I don’t see many at my school, so I was excited to meet a hijabi at TRIP yesterday! I’m sure there are Muslims at my school that I haven’t had the chance to meet, so I’m in the process of starting a Muslim School Association (MSA) club by the end of this month. At the beginning of my high school career this year, I was eager to be a part of the MSA to connect with other Muslims. It’s common in other schools, but East didn’t have one yet, so now I’ve made it my goal to establish one as soon as possible. Hopefully, it will expand into a larger community as time goes by. By the end of these blogs, this club will be up and running.
Yesterday was our first day of TRIP. It was an exciting experience since I got to meet both of the directors, Dr. Leystra and Dr. Purdy, the teaching instructors, Dr. Valdes and Mr. Cozzone, and the teaching assistants, Anoosha and Niki. We got to try out the micropipettes and set up our drugs and stressors which we will be testing next class. At the beginning, I was nervous but as time progressed, we got to see a glimpse of what awaited us for the next three months. I can already tell we’ll make great memories with the team as I have met many goal-driven people. By working together, we’ll develop strong collaboration skills and leave Trip with useful ideas. I might start at zero today, but I aim to reach higher by the end of this trip. I’ve come here to sharpen my thinking skills and stretch my capabilities by challenging myself with the knowledge that I know I can achieve if I work hard enough. I truly want to make use of every opportunity that’s provided in this program.  Hi everyone! I can believe we’re almost halfway done with our TRIP experience! These past 5 weeks have been really helpful as I’ve learned many important lab skills such as calculating concentrations, performing assays, making grape plates, and collecting data. I’ve also grown significantly as a student. I can ask better questions, provide feedback to my peers, and effectively implement the feedback I receive. I am especially thankful for Dr. Leystra, Dr. Purdy, Dr. Valdes, our TAs, and my peers for all their help and support.
For my individual experiment, I want to explore the transgenerational effects of caffeine on anxiety. I was interested in observing caffeine and anxiety as both of these factors are significant in our society. 31% of adults experience anxiety and the average American consumes approximately 1000 mg of caffeine per day, while the FDA recommends limiting caffeine to 400 mg daily. Additionally, these two factors correlate as some of their symptoms overlap, such as increased heart rate and restlessness. Beyond this, it is believed that overindulgence in caffeine can cause feelings of anxiety.  I can’t wait to start my experiment next week!
Hi everyone! It’s been a while! I can’t believe we are already halfway through our journey at TRIP! These past few weeks have been an incredible experience. I have learned and grown so much in the lab. I am able to measure liquids with a micropipette, make grape plates, analyze data, and my personal favorite, work with fruit flies! Currently I am finishing up my kick-off experiment; I tested how female fertility is affected by Red Clover (a perennial herb native to southeastern Europe) and a high sugar diet over a short period of time. To test this, I conducted the female fertility assay. This assay tells you how many unhatched embryos per female fly there are. After analyzing my data, I came to the conclusion that both Red Clover and a high sugar diet individually increased the number of embryos and female fertility, but the usage of both decreased the number of embryos per female in comparison to my control vial.  As we finish up my kick-off experiment, now I am brainstorming ideas for my independent project. Due to my own experience with insomnia, I would like to test how sleep deprivation and the consumption of melatonin affect anxiety and female fertility. I am planning to expose some of my flies to constant light to deprive them from sleep, this would be the stressor of my experiment. As for the drug, some of melatonin’s known side effects are to induce anxiety and to reduce the effectiveness of contraceptives. I am very excited to see how this turns out because it directly impacts anyone who utilizes melatonin or experiences sleep deprivation. To test how these factors affect anxiety and female fertility, I would use the open field test to determine whether the flies are anxious, and the female fertility assay to find the number of embryos. The open field test is when you place a fruit fly in the middle of an agar plate, and depending on where or if the fly moves, you can determine whether it is anxious or not. For the female fertility assay, you essentially make an incubator with a grape plate and a conical tube. After a 2 hour incubation period, you count the number of embryos.  I am very excited to see how this goes! I’ll make sure to update you guys soon!
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